Shades of Monochrome: The Revival of Black-&-White in Polish Cinema

zimna_wojna_1.jpg, default, Frame from ‘Zimna wojna’, directed by Paweł Pawlikowski, 2018, depicted: Joanna Kulig & Tomasz Kot, photo: Łukasz Bąk / Kino Świat

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A symptom of artistic snobbery for some, a promise of cinematic boredom for others. Black and white pictures have never left the world of cinema entirely, but recently they seem to be back in style. Here’s a guide to the most interesting films in black and white created recently.

‘The grass is always greener on the other side’, says an English proverb. The history of cinema shows that this is also relevant to the cinematic black and white versus colour dichotomy. While film aficionados in the prehistory of cinema painted every frame of a black and white film by hand to breathe life into the mini stories on screen, black and white has regained favour among contemporary filmmakers, who are virtually unhindered by technology.

The colourful 1990s

Black and white never really disappeared from cinema, of course, even though there were times when they had to give way to films in colour with their impressive, vibrant images. Polish cinema, especially in the 1990s, disregarded black-and-white films because the new Poland longed for colour and tried to tell stories the way American b-class films did, fed to us by Polish TV and video rentals. Poland, looking up to what was happening across the pond, wanted cinema to tell joyful stories and provide entertainment by means of action movies or soap operas (we’re talking about the times, let’s not forget, when broadcast TV was ruled by such shows as the Dynasty series). Black and white didn’t belong there, so this aesthetic was pushed into the margins.

This was not only a choice made by filmmakers but also a verdict of the market: audiences thought black-and-white films were boring, associating them with what was old-fashioned, and distributors knew black-and-white cinema wouldn’t sell. In the new reality, films had to make money.

‘Wojaczek’

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Krzysztof Siwczyk in ‘Wojaczek’, directed by Lech Majewski, 1999, photo: distributor’s promotional materials / Gutek Film

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It was only the turn of the century that brought the first signs of a black-and-white change. These signs were three important films: Wojaczek by Lech Majewski, Cześć, Tereska (Hi, Tereska) by Robert Gliński and Duże zwierzę (Big Animal) by Jerzy Stuhr. They differed in almost every respect, except the black-and-white film stock on which they were immortalised. Wojaczek was an attempt to mix a biographical drama about a famous poet with a parable about the destructive nature of art. Majewski, a visionary and an outsider to Polish film, proposed a very self-centred, artistically mature but hermetic film. The black and white of his film perfectly emphasised the artistic character of the work, but it also left room for something else. It is the monochromatic image that made it possible to focus the viewer’s attention on the young protagonist’s inner monologue instead of on the Silesian ugliness that shared the screen with him. Thanks to the black-and-white images, Majewski managed to avoid realism and journalistic literality.

‘Cześć, Tereska’

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Frame from ‘Cześć, Tereska’, directed by Robert Gliński, photo: TVP / Best Film

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Black-and-white images served a different purpose in Gliński’s film. Cześć, Tereska tells the story of a young girl raised in a dysfunctional environment and destined to repeat its patterns in some way. Robert Gliński chose monochromatic film to paint the portrait of a sad world full of vivid divisions and binary choices. His picture might irritate viewers today with its moralistic approach and sense of superiority towards its degraded characters. In 2001, when the film hit cinema screens, it was a breakthrough – not only because it took the audience for a journey around the miserable reality that Polish cinema of the 1990s didn’t want to see, but also due to the spectacular comeback of black-and-white film which didn’t stop Cześć, Tereska from succeeding commercially.

‘Duże zwierzę’

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Frame from ‘Duże zwierzę’, directed by Jerzy Stuhr, photo: TVP

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Duże zwierzę, directed by Jerzy Stuhr, premiered the previous year and was quite a successful film, even though it, just like Gliński’s work, presented the world in black and white… but not quite. Cześć, Tereska thrived on sharp contrast and expressive blacks and whites, while Duże zwierzę was a film bathed in various shades of grey. This was no coincidence, because Stuhr’s work did not carry the same moral unambiguity that Gliński’s had. It was more of a metaphorical tale about the need for tolerance.

The starting point was a short story called Wielbłąd (The Camel) written by Kazimierz Orłoś about a mysterious animal appearing in a small Polish town on an ordinary day. Krzysztof Kieślowski wrote a script to Duże zwierzę on the basis of this story, but it was a film he never managed to shoot – the text was found years after his death. Jerzy Stuhr, a friend and cinematic ‘pupil’ of Kieślowski’s, decided to bring it to the screen. Together with cinematographer Paweł Edelman, they created a warm story full of sadness and melancholy about rejection and harm, about the need to open up to others and about tolerance. There was no room in this world for sharp contrasts; Stuhr was much more interested in greyness, places of ambiguity. Instead of judging his characters, the director was asking for empathy.

‘Rewers’

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REWERS ZWIASTUN

These three films, produced around the turn of the century, changed thinking about the place of the black-and-white film, encouraging other artists to reach for monochromatic film stock. Among them was Borys Lankosz, who shot his black-and-white dark comedy in 2009. Rewers (The Reverse), his spectacular first feature film as a director, was an adaptation of a novel written by Andrzej Bart which told the story of three women representing three generations of an intellectual family told on the dark background of Poland under Stalinism.

Lankosz, however, didn’t play martyr, nor did he opt for a historical drama. He was interested in a grotesque dramedy, a story both funny and dreadful which would allow him to make fun of the paradoxes of Polish history. He dressed his tale in a black-and-white costume created for him by Marcin Koszałka, an excellent documentary filmmaker but, even more importantly, one of the most talented cinematographers of his generation.

After the film’s premiere, Tadeusz Sobolewski wrote about his cinematography:

In award-worthy black-and-white cinematography, Marcin Koszałka plays an evil-minded, ambiguous game. This cinematography takes us back to the cinema of those times on the one hand; on the other hand, there is a contemporary vibe to it. It helps us understand that to people of every age, either during occupation or in the Stalinist era, the world seems normal. You have to live in it, to play according to the rules you’re given, to evade and get around regulations. [trans. KZ]

Lankosz treated Koszałka’s cinematography as a tool for a game he played with the cinematic tradition, with history and with storytelling conventions. As his story changed from a social drama to a burlesque and a Hitchcock-like thriller (to quote the director himself), Koszałka’s cinematography changed to fit the convention chosen by the director.

‘Pan T.’

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Pan T. - Zwiastun PL (Official Trailer)

Over ten years later, another director from Kraków chose black and white to tell a story based in the Stalinist era. Marcin Krzyształowicz, the director of the superb Obława (Manhunt), decided to tell the story of a non-conformist writer fighting with the political authorities to save his inner freedom and artistic independency in Pan T. (Mister T.).

Inspired by the life of Leopold Tyrmand and the story of his writing of the book Zły (The Man with White Eyes), Krzyształowicz created a portrait of an outsider but also told a tale about the power of imagination which can be an escape or even the only safe space for an artist.

In preparing to shoot, Krzyształowicz faced a difficult colour dilemma. He was afraid of being compared to Rewers and of accusations of being derivative if he chose black and white, but he nonetheless made that choice. It wasn’t a random decision, though. Thanks to the monochromatic frames, Krzyształowicz redirected the audience’s attention from the picturesque scenery of Warsaw being reconstructed from ruins to the main character with his moral dilemmas and internal conflicts. Black-and-white frames didn’t overwhelm him; on the contrary – they let the filmmakers bring him to the foreground.

Black-and-white imagery served one more function for Krzyszałowicz and Adam Bajerski, who was working with him. Krzyształowicz was interested in comic books; his film turns away from realism towards cartoonish simplifications and the visual rhythm this kind of imagery imposes. Black and white deflected the cinematic image from realism and allowed the realistic texture of the story to combine with the comic-book imagination of the main character with just a few shots, such as the Kafkaesque corridor full of phantom people, making an impressive showcase of the film’s imagery.

‘Noc Walpurgi’

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"NOC WALPURGI" - zwiastun - film w kinach od 25 września 2015

Monochromatic film has become trendy in world cinema in recent years. Although Haneke’s The White Ribbon, Baumbach’s Frances Ha, Hazanavicius’s The Artist, Payne’s Nebraska and Cuarón’s Roma might seem like a promise of artistic success and festival awards, in Polish cinema black-and-white films are still the domain of brave directors. It’s no coincidence that most of them are debuting directors – they are filmmakers with little to lose, and they’re ready for daring experiments.

We need only mention Marcin Bortkiewicz, who chose black and white for his debut Noc Walpugi (Walpurgis Night), an austere story about a meeting between a young journalist and an aging opera diva brought together by a dark mystery from the past. This tale of values, moral choices and sins awaiting atonement reached its artistic potential thanks to the monochromatic image.

Another movie that gained additional advantage with the use of black and white was the short film Dalej jest dzień (Beyond Is the Day) by Damian Kocur. A beautiful film about the meeting of two lonely people somewhere in the Polish provinces in which the black and white format gave it an advantage. In this garb, the underlying psychological and moral dilemmas could resonate more fully and more powerfully.

‘Butterfly Kisses’

Among newcomers who decided to shoot their first movie in black and white, Rafał Kapeliński deserves special recognition. This director of Butterfly Kisses, which received an award in Berlin, is a unique newcomer, not only being a late one, since he director was in his forties, but the movie was also shot in England.

'Butterfly Kisses' directed by Rafał Kapeliński [Image Gallery]

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Kapeliński, a renowned film-school lecturer, made a coming-of-age film using a small budget about youngsters growing up in a typical neighbourhood of some British small town. He used the pattern of a naturalistic social drama, suggestive of Kassovitz’s La Haine (also in black and white), to tell the story of the desperate loneliness of a man who was developing a dangerous obsession. The main character was a boy discovering his paedophilic tendencies, confronting the truth about himself and trying to deal with it.

Kapeliński depicts him without sensationalist tones. He wants not to judge but to get to know the protagonist. In this black-and-white, high contrast world of young people where everything is expressive and strong, the main character is built in semi-shadows and various shades of grey. Kapeliński makes colour one of his formal tools to save the protagonist from premature judgement and easy melodrama.

Paweł Pawlikowski: the world in shades of grey

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ZIMNA WOJNA - oficjalny zwiastun filmu

He could not fail to be on our list. Paweł Pawlikowski is now a master of black-and-white cinema, a filmmaker who proved that the monochromatic image can bring a lot of colour and even more emotions to the screen.

When after years of working in the UK Pawlikowski came back to Poland to shoot his films here, nobody expected his work to be such a far-reaching experiment in terms of form. Meanwhile, with Ida and Zimna wojna (Cold War), both nominated for Oscars and recipients of awards at the most important film festivals worldwide, Pawlikowski, together with Łukasz Żal and Ryszard Lenczewski, created a whole new cinematic language.

In Ida, they not only decided to shoot in black and white but also chose the 4:3 format which is very rarely used in cinema. Pawlikowski and Żal surprised us with their frame composition: in Ida, details and close-ups were followed by wide shots with a lot of ‘air’ – empty space over the characters’ heads. Pawlikowski filled the empty overhead space with meaning, telling us about the need for spirituality and for the search for universal truth, while long, static shots built the film’s atmosphere and took our breath away with their visual beauty.

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Ida. Zwiastun

Recalling his work on Ida, Łukasz Żal said:

It was the director’s idea to shoot in black and white and to use a still camera for long, still shots. What he had in mind were images of his own childhood in Poland in the 1960s, seen in black and white, that was the way he wanted to tell this story. […] In ‘Ida’ we wanted to show the world the way Paweł remembered it as a child. It’s an uncluttered world, built of simple forms.

Both in Ida and in Zimna wojna, the director returned to his childhood, to the past and to his imaginings of it as engraved in his mind by cinema. Black and white was not only a formal idea but also an invitation to a personal journey to the world of films from his youth, which were dominated by productions shot in black and white.

Sentimental, artistically sophisticated cinematography became a part of Pawlikowski’s new style, his trademark. For Łukasz Żal it was a ticket to Hollywood, where the Polish cinematographer has already managed to film Charlie Kaufman’s I’m Thinking of Ending Things.

Pawlikowski became the godfather of the new fashion for black and white in cinema. His success sparked the revival of monochromatic pictures filmed in shades of grey. Let us hope it’s going to be something more than just an aesthetic trend, and in a few years the list of important black-and-white films will only get longer.

Translated by KZ

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black and white film

polish cinema

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